Intecessors of the Lamb

The people of Jesus' time were so intrigued with His whole doctrine of life that one day someone asked Him, "What is this life?" They didn't know what we now know today. His answer was so simple, but it's so profound. Jesus said, "Now this is eternal life, that they should know you (which means to experience the Father), the only true God , and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ (Jesus was speaking about Himself)" (Jn 17:3). Eternal life is to experience us. Isn't that beautiful! That was so foreign to them. In a way, it is still kind of foreign in our day. There is a sovereign movement of God that happens in silence that doesn't happen at any other time, and it's all throughout Scriptures.

For example, the Annunciation was shrouded with silence. There wasn't anybody there for this tremendous mystery. We've never heard anything like it-God becoming man, God becoming enfleshed in a woman. All this happened in silence. Bethlehem. Really, there wasn't hardly anybody there. Joseph was there. The animals. Jesus wasn't even born in the inn where there were people. This tremendous silence around this great mystery. The shepherds were the first ones notified that there was this baby born. It's interesting because Scripture says that when they came to the stable, they looked, and they saw. Nothing was said. They went back rejoicing and started telling everybody. They were receiving a gift of the Spirit. They were receiving a gift of understanding, a gift of knowledge, and a gift of wisdom. In the silence they understood what had happened.

One of the greatest mysteries of God's silence is Jesus' thirty years in Nazareth. Thirty years. When we want to teach a child something, it's hard to explain. We just have to show a child. I think God didn't take any time to explain the Nazareth years. I think He is trying to show us where the value is on the silence, the hiddenness, the growth in wisdom and light. We don't know anything about Nazareth other than one or two sentences when Jesus was twelve years old. But He grew. He is saying to us, "That is what I want you to do: grow in this inner silence, in this hidden life within." He is most at home in the Nazareth years, growing within each of us. He only gave three years to His public ministry. He gave thirty to this growth of His life with God, this Wisdom within. This is so important. This is what He's still doing within each one of us today.

We see the silence of Calvary, where He became the Lamb from Isaiah 53, the Lamb being led to the slaughter, and He opened not His mouth. The silence of God at the most important moment of redemption, with a tremendous battle going on, and He opened not His mouth.

Then look at the great mystery of silence that shrouded the Resurrection. Again, no one was there. They arrived the next morning when He was gone. The tomb was empty. No one was there. God is saying something to us about His revelation encountered in silence and, of course, the Eucharist itself. He has chosen to remain with us in this kind of silence. So it's revelation that happens in the silence. It's very, very important to God.

In the book of Revelation, John the contemplative saw and heard that everything in heaven was silent for a half hour (Rv 8:1). All the angels stopped their singing. All the saints stopped whatever they were doing. That's unheard of that all of heaven was silent for a half hour, but silence always comes before God's movement. The more silent He gets, the more He's going to move. It's almost like He commands it so that He has our attention.

Just to go back to our dinner table at Bellwether. The most amazing thing happens there every night. We can hardly hear the person next to us speak because the noise is deafening with everybody talking and laughing. It's a joyous group of people. But about the time we're finished with our meal, about the time that coffee or whatever is being served, all of a sudden, it's like the presence of God shows up in a way that everyone stops talking instantly. It's just this awesome silence. It's almost like the Holy Spirit is hovering over. That's when God wants for them to share one by one with the whole group. So everyone is listening because the silence is there, but again, it's a pregnant silence. It's filled with God's presence.

And so He's saying, just stop. Stop what you're doing and take a little time. Just look and listen. Take time to welcome the Word. Take time to be a receiver. Active listening is a good way to do this. Listening itself is an act of silence. We have found that if we just listen to the silence, our minds go everywhere-distraction after distraction because there's a vacuum there. We can't listen to empty silence very long. So God showed us the way He taught His apostles, and that is to ask questions. When we read the Gospels, these men asked one question after another. The beauty of it is when we ask God questions, and only one question at a time, we can expect an answer. He knows we expect an answer, and He answers. So there's a dialogue. We are listening, but we're listening for His response to us. It's an active silence, and it keeps us very focused. It's a dialogue type of silence. Sometimes prayer can be a monologue, where we're doing all the talking and we're not giving God the chance to say anything. Well, He likes to speak, and He wants us to hear Him.

Isaiah said, "Morning after morning he opens my ear that I may hear" (Is 50:4). This is what He wants to do. He wants us to hear something from Him every single day. Jesus was kneeling there washing Peter's feet. By this time, Peter had a pretty good idea who Jesus was because he had the revelation that He was the Christ, the Son of the Living God. So when Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God, is now kneeling at Peter's feet to wash his feet, Peter is horrified. He pulls back his feet like, "God forbid you should wash my feet." Jesus says, "But Peter, if I don't, you can have no part of Me." Peter says, "Wash all of me" (see Jn 13:5-9)-he wanted His whole self washed because he so wanted to be part of Jesus.

I read that and said, "Lord, am I missing something here? There's nothing in Scripture that warrants this tremendous change in Peter. What changed him? What happened? Did he receive a gift here? He understood something. You were communicating something to him. What was it?" Jesus' answers usually are just one or two little sentences because He doesn't want to give us too much or we can't handle it. He said, "Well, you know Peter really loved Me." I said, "Yes, he really did. He did love You. I know You loved Him so much that You were making him head of the Church." He said, "But Peter was pretty macho. He was the leader, but Peter didn't know how to receive yet." He said, "Peter being a leader, Peter being macho, and Peter loving Me meant Peter wanted to do things for Me. And he did."

But Jesus said, "Peter, I'm here in your midst as one who serves, and unless you know how to receive My ministry, receive My love, receive My servanthood, then Peter, you have nothing to give. I can't use you." That's what He was indicating to Peter. Peter needed to become not just a lover and giver and a doer, but he had to become a receiver so that he could welcome the Word, so that he could welcome those graces, so that he could be filled up every day being absorbed as Jesus was in prayer, and then give it all away. Then Peter had something to give. That's true, isn't it? We can't give something we don't have.

So God is asking us to become receivers. We learn this so beautifully from Our Lady. She was the receiver. Who knows, maybe Jesus learned it from her as well. He had a lot of her training. Mary knew how to receive. That's the primary grace of Our Lady that she constantly gained for us-to receive. Here God had this beautiful gift-He's going to come to earth, but He needed a receiver to receive it. I can't imagine what it would have been like if she hadn't received the Gift, if she hadn't listened, or if she would have said no. But she did listen, and she said yes. So she gets us the grace to receive.

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's "Contemplative Love," Great Falls, VA, March 2002.

07-01-02 Communal Discernment

July 1, 2002

"Communal Discernment"

Our contemplative prayer lives are one of our main safeguards for good discernment. Whenever we are trying to make a decision, particularly a personal decision, before we bring it to anyone or our spiritual directors, we take it to our journal. We bring it into the light. The enemy cannot stand the light. He'd like us to keep it inside and mull it around and around and around until we fall into confusion - until we fall into more darkness. So we bring it to our journals in the beginning, so it comes into the light.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Light. He is Light. So we are seeking His light because it's a much brighter light than "the angel of light" (Satan). Once we have the Holy Spirit's light, we will see the deception of a false light so clearly. We may even wonder, "Why didn't I spot that? It's so clear. It's so obvious." Well, it's because we were relying on our own natural light, and under our little light, Satan's light looks pretty good, but with the Holy Spirit's light, we can see it in a second for what it is and where it's leading.

Another safeguard that God stresses with us is communal discernment. Somehow the Church has gotten away from communal discernment, but in some areas the Church has gotten away from community, too. God is calling us together now, to pray together, and to discern together. We place a great deal of emphasis on Jesus' words to us when He said, "If two or three (that's not many) are gathered in My name, there I am in their midst" (see Mt 18:20). What a safeguard that is! We have His Word-He is in our midst helping us with decisions, helping us discern, bringing His tremendous wisdom and light.

So our discernment is always communal. Satan hates anything communal. He hates community because the Community of communities is the Trinity, and he hates the Trinity. So he will try to discourage us from picking up the phone and asking someone to pray with us for some discernment. He'll discourage us as much as he can from gathering together. Sometimes it will be, "Oh, you don't have time to do that. Hurry, hurry." So take the time and find people who are hearing from the Lord, people who you trust, and people who you trust what they are receiving in prayer from God. So that whenever we're in this two or three gathered in His name, we really have it from the Lord what He wants.

When we're in a little group, whether it's two or three or four or five, always establish one person as the leader of that group. The leader is important in each group. Now that leader can change every time you get together if you want, but there's always an order and God will honor the order very specially.

One of the reasons a leader is so important is that the leader is the one who puts the question before God. The leader may consult with the other people on the team, "How do you think we should word this question so we can be sure we're getting the answer to what we're asking here?" But once the question is put before the Lord, it's the leader who puts the question before the Lord and that leader is going to have very good discernment, but that leader will not be the only person who is getting the discernment. The discernment will come communally. It doesn't come where only one person is hearing God. The beauty of communal discernment is that everyone hears from God. Some might hear from God through an image or two. Some might hear from God through a Scripture. Some might hear from God through the remembrance or recall of a song or a poem or something that they had read or seen, and now the Spirit is bringing it up. We know the difference between us recalling and the Spirit prompting a particular memory or image. So we share that.

The beauty of communal discernment is that no one person has the discernment in the group; that's the protection of it. Fr. Bertolucci used to say, "None of us have it all together, but together we have it all." So as each little piece of the puzzle gets turned over, we will begin to see God's mind and heart on whatever it is that we put before the Lord. It's a beautiful safeguard because we are under a canopy of humility. It's like the early Church. Paul says, "The Holy Spirit and we have decided . . . " (Acts 15:28). That's a very important little pronoun in there-it's not "the Holy Spirit and I or me" but it's "the Holy Spirit and we." So we need to be sure that we have that "we" and are deciding together with the Holy Spirit. That's what makes this kind of discernment very powerful and very accurate. We may have misses, but there will be few because it's communal and Jesus Himself is there in our midst.

So we are always asking God what His preference is. The way we put the question before God is important. For example, if we were deciding whether or not to come to this conference, if we put the question before God, "Should we or should we not go to Omaha?" we have put a double question before Him. We used to do that, and we would go into total confusion because we'd get things and wonder, "Which part of the question is He answering?" We didn't know, but He was letting us know, "That's right. You don't know. You gave Me two questions." So now we only give Him one, "Should we go to Omaha?" It's a simple question. God is simple-"yes" or "no." If we don't receive anything at all, we can reword the question. "Is it Your preference we not go to Omaha?" You might hear then. We can reword the question, but we put the question before God in a very simple way. We've found that if our question isn't really simple and direct, that when He does answer, we haven't any idea of what He's saying, and we'll go into a guessing mode. "I wonder if He means this? Or do you think He means that?" Once we get into the natural and into the guessing mode our discernment is finished. We need to get the discernment right from God Himself. There's no guess work to it.

Excerpt from "Discernment," Pillars Album, Omaha, NE, 2001.

07-08-02 It Becomes A Lifestyle

July 8, 2002

"It Becomes a Lifestyle"

There is what is called the Office of Intercession. It the burden-bearing, Calvary-type intercession where we, like Jesus, are victim lambs of our own intercession. We are asking God to do something, and He may gives us a transference of that person's sin or pain. As Jesus was burdened with our sins, as we became one with the Lamb of God, He continues to take away sin through us. This is done through what we call "transferences." For example, we might have a headache and Tylenol doesn't help. This is when we, like Jesus, are victims lambs of our own intercession.

Once a priest asked me to pray for him, and the next thing I know, I was driving in circles. I said, "Lord, this is really strange. This is my hometown, and I'm going in circles. This is very confusing." He said, "That's right. Father, who just asked you to pray, is confused. I have transferred his confusion to you so that he can have clarity right now for the very important decision that he needs to make." I said, "Oh. Help him make the decision right away so it can lift." And it lifted right away.

Oftentimes, there are what we call "heart-piercings." We've all experienced these heart-piercings. Simeon's beautiful prophetic word to Mary, "And you yourself shall be pierced with a sword-so that the thoughts of many hearts may be laid bare" (Lk 2:35). So if we have a heart-piercing of any kind, there is no power in intercession quite like that. We know grace is going forth. It's going to be a Pentecost for somebody-there's new life somewhere.

I had a friend who was very ill. She walked around like death warmed over because she had constant headaches. She'd had a spinal injury and there wasn't anything they could do. She was only in her thirties. Finally she went out East to the top doctors for more testing, and they couldn't help her. It was so sad. So one day, my favorite cat (that might not be a lot to many people, but my little Jennifer meant a lot to me), Jennifer, got killed that morning very suddenly, and it caused me a lot of pain. Right away I knew, "Lord, You're going to heal her, aren't You? You're going to use this pain." So whenever we have pain, we need to ask God to use it. Pain is not the worst thing in the world; wasted pain is. Don't waste it. Later that day the phone rang and the headaches had stopped! Everything had cleared up. She said, "I think I can fly home without the airplane." I said, "That's nice. I'm glad you're happy." Our heart pain will be from a child, a loved one, or someone or something that we love because that's what causes us pain. It was the Sword of the Spirit, it was Love, that pierced the heart of Mary. She is our intercessor par excellence.

John the Baptist was a great intercessor. Scripture says, "And you, O child (speaking of John) . . . shall go before the Lord to prepare straight paths for him, giving his people a knowledge of salvation in freedom from their sins" (Lk 1:76-77). This is very important because then God will lift that sin. He will give them some sort of an experience of new life, joy, some of the fruits of the Spirit, and oftentimes the Spirit Himself. So watch for opportunities to pray. It becomes a lifestyle.

Excerpt from "Intercession," Skaneateles Lake, NY, 2001.

12-22-03 Incarnational Spirituality

December 22, 2003

"Incarnational Spirituality"

Jesus comes and takes up residency again and again in every baptized soul. Then if that soul lets Him grow, He starts to take over a little more and more until finally, like St. Paul experienced, "Yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20). St. Paul was so overtaken now with the Christ within him.

The way the Lord began to let me become aware of Incarnational spirituality, the indwelling Presence in a deeper way, was actually when I was still in the cloister. Here I am, a vowed nun (and one of the vows is poverty), so I was so surprised at my question to the Lord one day when I was kneeling in front of the tabernacle. I realized later it must have been prompted by the Holy Spirit. My question was, "Do I have anything You need? Do I have anything that God needs?" I didn't have a thing to my name anyway. I was amazed when He said, "Yes." I said, "I do? What is it?" He said, "Your body. I need your body."

God needs human temples to continue His great redemptive mission, to continue warfare, to continue loving. We can't love as God has loved us, but the God within us can do it. The God within us can forgive. The God within us can continue to lay down His life in that great agape love. And so we see Jesus has come as the Transformer. He is going to transform us. He is trying to change us. We have a fallen nature, and so He gives us His Spirit and the power of His Spirit to begin changing us because that's the great power of love.

I asked, "How did You know what it was time to leave Nazareth? How did You know? You were there so long. How did you ever finally know that this was the time for You to leave and begin Your public ministry?" He said, "The same way that you know." I said, "You mean that I know because I'm feeling the promptings of the Spirit? I'm hearing from the Spirit." He said, "So did I." I said, "We have the same Spirit." Now, that's theology, isn't it? We know that there's only one Holy Spirit, and it's the Spirit of the Father, it's the Spirit of Jesus that's given to us. But all of a sudden, I was filled with the reality that the same Spirit that moved Jesus Christ is the same Spirit that moves within me! It gave me so much hope because I thought, "He's been through it before. He's done it before. He's pulled this whole Church together before, and He knows what He's doing. All I have to do is pay attention to the Holy Spirit." It's so simple. Be docile, be obedient, be led by the Holy Spirit. When we look at the life of Jesus, we see it everywhere. I had missed it before. He was led. He was led into the desert. He was led into public ministry. He was led to Calvary. He was led up to heaven. And so the Spirit will lead us if we give Him the opportunity. It's a process, and it is the work of the Holy Spirit. It's a work of love.

Excerpt from "Surrendered Love," Great Falls, VA, March 2002.

06-24-02 Blocks to Healing

June 24, 2002

"Blocks to Healing"

We have learned to look more for the root of our healing and to try to bypass the symptoms. We have to look at symptoms first because that's what is most obvious. For example, if we overreact, we may not overreact physically but we know inside when our hearts are overreacting to something. So we take our feelings and emotions to the journal to find the root of what is happening. "This is how I'm reacting, Lord. This is how I'm thinking. This is what I'm saying, and I'm upset. This is disturbing me." Or we may write, "I'm still in pain. What is the root?" Oftentimes God is the only One who can reveal the root. This is what we want to get to because we want the root healed so we can be free.

There are blocks to inner healing. The first major block is unforgiveness of others. That's a biggie. Jesus went on the Cross to get the grace for us to forgive. He paid a high price. This is why He has said to us, "Because of what I have done for you, there is no justification in unforgiveness." Forgiving takes love power, and we do not have that kind of power. To forgive is divine. It takes God power. So we go to our journal. We go into the presence of God and beg Him for that kind of love. "Lord, I need more love so that I can forgive. I don't have the power."

Now the root might even be deeper. It might be that we don't even have the desire to forgive. If we don't have the desire to forgive because we are afraid that we are going to get hurt again, then we pray and beg for the grace of desire. "Lord, give me the desire to want to forgive." When the desire comes, it often comes in stages. Healing comes in stages, particularly when the wound is deep and the hurt may have been there a long time. The second block of unforgiveness may be towards God Himself, our buried anger at God. "Why did You give me these parents? Why weren't You there when I needed You as a little child? Why was I adopted? Why was I rejected? Where were You when I had no one and You were not there for me? Where were You?" These are authentic questions, and we ask them in our journals because we need to hear from God. Hearing from God will be the healing itself. Often we have a tendency to turn our backs on God because we're angry at Him. We may be afraid to let God know that we are angry with Him, but no one knows this better than God Himself! So we give Him the silent treatment and the pain continues and the root can grow and the wound can fester. So unforgiveness towards God Himself can be a block. We have a lot of "whys?" and they need to be answered. Believe me, He will answer them.

The third area of unforgiveness is towards myself. Believe it or not, this is the most difficult of the three to heal. Retreat after retreat after retreat, this is where we find that a person has a very difficult time to forgive and accept himself or herself. In journaling we can talk about it with God and hear from God how to handle it or how He feels about it or what He saw when it happened or what He heard, and the healing will be there.

Another way that we get healed is if we can identify with Jesus. This comes out of contemplation again. "Lord, did You ever hurt like this? Where? How? Show me so that I can use it somehow." Even though I might have been hurt as a child, that can still be redemptive in my grown-up life. God can use that pain today to set other people free and heal them.

Excerpt from "Inner Healing," Pillars Album, Omaha, NE, 2001

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